Nuking the Fridge

I learned of this great new term yesterday. The term "jumped the shark" has been around for several years. It's a reference to an old episode of Happy Days where the Fonz ski jumps over a great white shark. Most Happy Days fans point to that event as the beginning of the end for the show. In other words, the creators tried to do something "big" to generate ratings and instead sent the show plummeting in the other direction. Other examples of jumping the shark would be the newer Star Wars movies, cousin Oliver joins the Brady Bunch family, or Niles & Daphne getting married on Frasier. You can probably think of dozens of others.

The new term I spoke of earlier that is taking the nation by storm, means pretty much the same thing as "jumped the shark". It was all started a few weeks ago when the world witnessed a brand new Indiana Jones movie. Indy gets caught in a government nuclear test. To protect himself from the blast, he jumps into a led-lined refrigerator, shuts the door, is blasted through the air several miles, tumbles violently across the desert, opens the doors and walks away without so much as an "ouch". Such is the birth of the term "nuke the fridge". So the next time your favorite TV show or movie franchise goes in an insane direction, inform everyone that they've just "nuked the fridge"!

Here's a question for discussion. Obviously the church has gone downhill in reputation over the last 20 years or so. So when do you think the American church nuked the fridge?